Chapter 18: The Gala

I went in alone, through the front, as she had asked.

The ballroom of the Custom House held three hundred people at round tables with white roses on them.

Behind the stage, a wide screen said CORRIGAN FREIGHT, ONE HUNDRED YEARS, in blue letters.

My father rose from table one as I crossed the floor, and pulled out my chair, and did not let go of the back of it until I sat.

"She's at the podium in ten minutes," he whispered.

"I know."

Finbar sat at the back with a bow tie on over his hoodie.

Celia was beside him with the pencil behind her ear, glaring at the canapés.

At the very back, against the wall by the door, stood a tall man in a black coat who did not take a seat.

I did not look at him.

I knew exactly where he was.

Marguerite came on in cream silk, to applause.

She spoke about the firm, and the harbor, and the families who had made it, and she let her voice catch at the right places.

"But tonight is also about one of our own," she said. "A girl who was very ill and is, thank God, much better."

She turned her head and smiled at me across three hundred faces.

"Hazel, darling. Will you say a few words?"

She held out the microphone.

I understood that she had planned it to the second.

If I refused, I was frightened.

If I stood and stumbled, I was unwell.

I stood up, walked to the stage and took the microphone out of her hand.

"Thank you, Marguerite," I said. "I'd like to."

The room was silent, kind, and watching.

"For four years," I said, "I turned up where a man named Padraig Ellsworth happened to be, and everyone told me it was my fault."

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